PRESIDENTIAL AWARDS FOR EXCELLENCE IN 2013 - Chemistry

Donna McGregor, Lecturer and Undergraduate Advisor, Chemistry, has won a 2013 Presidential Award for Excellence for Full-Time Teaching.

Hunter's own Donna McGregor is routinely selected to speak to prospective incoming students interested in the sciences for a reason: no one else can make general chemistry sound as accessible or exciting. Donna, who came to Hunter in 2009, is responsible for teaching and organizing much of the 100-level chemistry curriculum which provides introductory chemistry courses to over a thousand of our undergraduates each year. She has worked diligently at creating effective strategies to engage students in the large chemistry classes and also led the development of a course for non-science majors to meet the requirements of the CUNY Pathways initiative. This work included her efforts last year to successfully pilot the labs that will be part of the new course. As part of Hunter's Mellon Foundation supported Arts Across the Curriculum initiative, Dr. McGregor and a group of undergraduate students worked in the lab over the course of the semester to help NYC performance artist Martynka Wawrzyniak capture the "essence of the artist." Under McGregor's guidance, the students found ways to extract isolate and concentrate the scent from Wawrzyniak's sweat, hair and tears. The extractions were used to create a "perfume" for Wawrzyniak's "Olfactory Self-Portrait" exhibit. This project was so unusual and successful that it was reported in The Wall Street Journal and the Huffington Post.